Before I throw this Apple II clone out, I figured I would try it after 15 years in the basement. All I get is this image as soon as I turn it on. The CAPSLOCK key is lit (red), and nothing I type on the keyboard changes the image. No drive activity or any sounds. Turning the computer on and off produces the same image.
Safe to say the motherboard/CPU is fried?
Well it probably has some oxidized chips and connections. Not sure how the clones were made.
But the socketed chips may need to be reseated at the very least. Any that have badly oxidzed lack legs should be cleaned and reinstalled. The disk drive card edge should be cleanned and reinserted a few times to make a good connect. Just reinserting it a few times does not solve your problems.
Take Care
First of all... never throw out a clone unless they are pretty much destroyed. All but the Lasers and Franklins seem to be pretty rare and some of those are even rare. At least give it away to someone willing to restore it.
There are several things that could be wrong but without testing the parts you are stuck replacing parts until you find the problem.
Did you try removing all the cards to see if you get a prompt?
The motherboard shouldn't be fried but a quick visual inspection should tell you if there are obvious problems.
I'd test the output of the power supply. I've heard of some going bad just sitting in storage but it's rare.
You can test the clock input to the CPU with a logic probe to see if it's working.
If the data and address buss show activity with a logic probe then the CPU is probably ok but a bad chip on the buss could halt the cpu.
ROMs usually last a long time but I suppose and EEPROM might loose some date if hit by some sort of radiation. Cosmic rays have been shown to have the ability to change bits in a computer but I'm not sure if they will effect this large of computer logic.
RAMs from that era seem pretty sensitive and they are a likely culprit.
To be honest, the Apple II series and clones prior to the IIe used off the shelf chips and many machines had them socketed so it's pretty easy to repair them.
From the photo I'd say the video hardware is at least partially working.
Ok guys it's working. The power supply is old and flaky. All I did was just snap the power switch on and off around 30 times. Now it's working all the time with the OS-22 boot screen and disk drive grind.
However, most games don't work. The disk drive just reads the disk three times and then stops reading or the disk keeps spinning with the read light frozen.
Seems like I'm missing Applesoft in ROM or Diversi-Dos as that what it says on the screen. I did yank out the ROM board a few times.
That doesn't sound like a ROM issue.
that would probably be the disk controller, dirty heads, a cable connection or bad disks.